we've seen several websites that do not break US law get evicted by registrars, ISPs, DDoS protection services, and other Internet landlords. 4chan miraculously survived multiple mass hysteria periods of the past decade without (iirc) any major disruptions. same as Russian 2ch -- miraculously untouched by Russia's rapid North Koreaization even though its /pol/ is overwhelmingly anti-regime.

Regarding the honeypot allegations, I'm guessing they're referring to the connections between 4chan's founder, Christopher Poole, aka "moot", and Jeffrey Epstein:

https://www.ms.now/opinion/jeffrey-epstein-4chan-chris-poole

It's was mostly a slightly more edgy 4chan with actually some more varied boards and wider range of political views (/leftypol/) was a thing If I remember. So mostly dumb teens and later the whole Q-Anon mentally ill boomers who took over once the board was brought by one of them much to displeasure of the edge teens. In short if that is a threat to a government and a society it's a weak government and society, comparing it to Al-Qaeda or some kind of comparable threat to anything government or nation is crazy.

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Don't forget the X-Files spinoff The Lone Gunmen. During its pilot episode, first airing March 4th, 2001, members of the U.S. government remotely hijack an airliner and try to crash it into the World Trade Center, blaming anti-American terrorist groups in order to start a new global war on terrorism for the profit of defense industry contractors.

Yeah; how many times in 24 hours can one vigilante commit acts of thinly-narratively-justified but actually-illegal torture without audiences clueing in?

MIC influence is very likely, but 24 was written before 9/11.

The neoconservative wing of the Republican Party had a hardon for war before the attack. What they couldn’t agree on was where… an invasion of Colombia under pretext of drugs, or something in the Middle East after the second intifada.

Once the planes hit, they could all agree where. South America was forgotten for a while.

Any direct connection to 24 would likely be tenuous, if only because (a) MIC propaganda is all over Hollywood even in peacetime, and (b) dark (i.e., on-camera physical interrogation) political thriller was already a high-selling genre in 2001.

Same with Homeland. How many times do you see Carrie stymied by the law and cheer when she eventually breaks it?

Is that even a conspiracy? It's well documented how closely the military works with Hollywood -- of course government apparatuses are interested in funding media that aligns with their goals.

I was going to say the same about James Bond, but it turns out they literally boast about helping in its production on their website, so it's not really a conspiracy theory https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/the-cia-and-pop-culture/

You’re missing something else that happened right before 24 debuted on November 6, 2001.

It doesn’t even need to be secret or underhanded. The government can simply foster the media that drives their strategic goals. Same kind of idea as stochastic terror.

I don't know if that is a conspiracy theory; it probably is a bit unlikely to have a direct connection to the CIA. But what is definitely not a conspiracy theory is that the USA uses taxpayer's money to fund propaganda, e. g. a pro-war image. There are numerous examples for this, also for directors who refused to accept such deals since that heavily ruined movies. The movies with bribes from the US military are often incredibly dumb and simplistic. Propaganda often works in such a way that it dumbs down everything. Then again, movie quality also declined a LOT in the last some 20 years or even 30 years now. With AI movies upcoming, the slop spam section has finally won. People are not going to pay money for awful AI slop.

Except people love torture anyway. Even people who say they're opposed to torture usually do so in terms of "it's bad to torture people, but like, it would totally work". It is a ludicrously common sentiment.

The actual conspiracy was the CIA told the Zero Dark Thirty producers that the Intel to find bin Laden came from torturing a detainee, which was a straight up lie (namely: under standard interrogation he provided the intelligence they needed...then they waterboarded him over 100 more times which provided absolutely nothing).

Why do you need the detour through the CIA? Our de jure Constitutional government is merely part of a much larger de facto government formed by large corporations and the billionaire (oligarch) class. The same group of people who funded the lobbyists that had the "Patriot" Act ready and waiting on September 10th also funded "24", the politicians and think tanks behind the Iraq War, and so on. The main difference is that production of "24" was a direct bona fide business expense for tax purposes.

Yep. People have had their homes raided in Germany for hosting online content about the Israeli genocide of Palestine. You don't get any warning - the police just show up and take all electronic devices, no exceptions.

Yeah epstein emails showed Christopher Poole met with Jeff the day before he made /pol/ and ghislaine was a mod of many subreddits.

And it probably didnt start with them

Sounds better and better!

No. It's an anvil dropped onto the mouse.

In this example, Signal itself and anyone associated with it, could not have any bank accounts at all. There wouldn't be any receiving end for donations. Being on the OFAC list means any bank connected through SWIFT wouldn't allow you as customer. Current funds would be immediately frozen, which by itself would probably cause fatal disruption. The OFAC list is an extreme measure, which is why the recent abuse is such a big deal.

As mentioned elsewhere, read up on the Rote Hilfe case to see how this kinda thing plays out right now. "Antifa Ost", four people beating up (NOT murdering) Neonazis were declared a designated global terror network by the Trump admin in 2025. Those four "global terrorist" were all already in custody, on trial in Germany at the time, hardly a threat. Rote Hilfe lost their bank account, because of weak association through legal defense support. Mind you, Rote Hilfe is a traditional German political institution being only cancelled once before: 1933. And the GLS bank who cancelled their account proactively fearing SWIFT exclusion, would be considered a socialist endeavor by US standards. That's the reach of OFAC.

So, to evade sanctions, Signal would need to maintain internationally ostracized money laundering networks on the scale of global terror financing, or North Korean operations. They are not some hidden service black market, where any hosting is sufficient. Paying AWS millions for large scale, low-latency CDN infrastructure with highly suspicious finances ain't gonna fly. I assume, due to statistic correlation, considering the necessary volumes moved, it's probably simply impossible to pull off.

And of course, Signal's income is in large parts coming from various nation's registered funds, which obviously wouldn't participate in highly illegal financing. Individual donations won't cut it (and also expose any donor to being flagged for terror financing, losing access to their own accounts). Not to mention, money laundering infrastructure isn't free, so only a fraction of donations would make it anyway...

The problem here is also Signal's centralized nature. If it was built for a decentralized, self-hostable backend, where only the code itself has to escape repression, it wouldn't be as vulnerable. However, as with other decentralized projects, we likely wouldn't talk about it as hypothetical heavy loss due to wide-spread adoption and foundation of common privacy.

Signal's whole mission is to enable e2ee at scale, for the average person. OFAC listing would be the end of Signal and any similar project.

Ah, blockchain-based. Maybe it's fine. I prefer my idea with dummy messages and no ledgers or anything.

I don't understand your comment.

No. With dummy messages you are guaranteed that traffic analysis will not be possible.

Because you connect to the network, then start sending messages to everybody continuously, a message every second, or every ten seconds, or every 100 seconds, you will, every second, or every ten seconds, or 100 seconds, be able to send a message to whoever you want, and you will not be distinguished in any way from the other network participants, even if an adversary controls all nodes but that of the person you want to communicate with. Without dummy messages, traffic analysis will always be possible.

If they knowingly and deliberately assisted the PKK in a forbidden way, there would likely have been an Italian prosecution. Since this hasn't happened, it probably isn't true.

The illegality of the PKK in the Europe is also something quite complicated. The commission have declared it a terrorist organization, but here in Sweden such declaration have no judicial meaning and we define terrorism by whether the organization satisfies objective criteria defined in our law, which the courts determine from case to case (which in Sweden means that if you send money the PKK and prosecutor brings the case and argues that they're terrorist organization, and you argue badly, and he wins, then you might be convicted, but when another guy does the same thing, and argues well, he wins); and the situation in Belgium is similarly complicated, with a legal dispute about whether PKK was a terrorist organization, which PKK won, and thus the PKK was, in Belgium, declared by a court to not be a terrorist organization.

Signal and WhatsApp are already required to give your communications to the government.

PKK is the pretext, there is no evidence.

The US does not give a damn about PKK. They used the Kurdish sister organizations in Syria and Iran. They condemn PKK because Erdogan wants it.

The US would have zero issues with a Kurdish state comprising parts of Turkey and Iran that splinters the region even more.

> It's based on three designated foreign terrorist organizations, notably the PKK.

In this context, "designated foreign terrorist organizations" is not an explanation, but a tautology. The matter at hand is how and why something got onto that list.

The antifa remark relates to the Rote Hilfe situation. In my opinion, it's an example of how populist rhetoric became a major overreach with real consequences prior to the incident at hand. Rote Hilfe had a very weak relation to "Antifa Ost" (hardly worth US attention). That's how they got cancelled: https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...

So the antifa moral panic is indeed very much relevant.

But decide for yourself, if "Antifa Ost" deserves US anti-terrorism attention to the extent of OFAC sanctions, or if it's maaaybe populist action... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dresden_left-wing_extremism_tr...

Incidentally, funny how the NSU isn't on that list, hm?

Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project ruled that knowingly providing material support to designated terrorist organizations is not protected by the first amendment. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/561/1

But I'm curious about your take on this. How would you argue the first amendment protects this?

The USA has never had free speech. There's not one time in its history when the government wasn't trying to force people it disagreed with to shut up.

> Just like financial services are forced to KYC, there would have to be some similar provision.

To echo what you said to the other poster, that does not follow:

1. Simply repealing Section 230 would not create some kind any novel "know your poster" legal requirement that doesn't previously exist.

2. Most sites would not have any incentive to do it either, since knowing the original author's identity would not shield them from liability. In some cases it would increase their liability instead!

> If a site wanted anonymous then the burden would be on moderation before it became public.

No, for most sites the opposite would occur.

One of the big things Section 230 does is it declares that the act of moderating does not create involvement and liability for the message. It means you can block things without becoming a sorta-co-author of the things that pass the filter.

Repeal that, and sites will be forced into either (A) basically no moderation so no liability or (B) blocking 99% and letting through the safest 1% they're willing to be liable for.

_______________

Useful links:

* "Everything You Know About Section 230 Is Wrong (But Why?) " https://www.techdirt.com/2021/10/29/everything-you-know-abou...

* "Hello! You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230 Of The Communications Decency Act " - https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...

From supporters of the defendants:

https://prairielanddefendants.com/what-really-happened-at-pr...

I'm not going to just take the word of anybody in the US government without listening to the other side. The description on "Episode 10 Who Attacked" is the other side.

> and he actually shot a police officer during their "protest."

He did not, he shot at an officer and missed. He was also the only one of the protestors that shot.

Fair, I guess, although again I’m uncomfortable with how the PKK link appears to be used as an excuse for political suppression. I think in cases like this, it would be best to order the provider to discontinue services to the specific entity in question before resorting to sanctions, since they provided services to other political groups that were not listed as “terrorists”. I’m not sure if we have any information about whether this happened or not.

>The attack on Iranian school was to the best of my knowledge a mistake stemming from old intel.

Bloomberg piece on this topic:

>An Analyst’s Missed Remark Surfaced in Deadly Iran School Strike Probe

>An analyst's missed remarks and US intelligence systems that weren’t connected to one another are among the missteps that investigators have surfaced while probing the cause of a missile strike on an Iranian school that killed an estimated 120 children, people familiar with the matter said.

>Years before the US attacked Iran at the end of February, an intelligence analyst examining information about potential future strike targets in Iran noticed changes at a site the US had previously characterized as a naval facility belonging to the elite wing of the Iranian military in Minab city in the southeast of the country. It was, in fact, now an elementary school.

>The analyst remarked on changes at the site in a digital intelligence tool, but that tool wasn’t linked up to the official intelligence database that the US uses to develop strike targets and the information was never conveyed to military commanders, according to people familiar with the matter who declined to be named discussing sensitive matters.

https://archive.is/LNMMf

Strictly speaking, no. If you're going to play semantics, you first need to define how "unintended" is "unintended". If I drive down the highway at 200mph and get someone killed, is this unintentional? Now what if I do so in a crowded street? If I'm sending a missile at a country, how much effort do I need to put into research to be able to say it was "collateral" damage? If I aim them completely randomly, then what's the verdict?

If you're going to go down the semantics route, every word needs proper inspection. You're focusing on only one of them, "terrorism".

Luckily though, we don't need to; the US does more than enough intentional extrajudicial executions of civilians on its own. Even just considering one particular area where it does them, and then only the ones we know about, we're at about 227 civilian executions in just the last few years [0].

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/10/29/us/us-caribbe...

Oh okay, how about the deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructure?

I love how governments (in the west) are absolutely incapable of campaigns of terror.

What about intended collateral damage?

> The attack on Iranian school was to the best of my knowledge a mistake stemming from old intel.

A mistake in a completely unjust war.

And what about the fishing boats we are bombing in the Caribbean and the Pacific? Not even the pretense of a legitimate war in that situation.

if the argument is harm reduction and reducing the overall incidence of terrorism, my argument flies.

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>To be explicitly clear, a "neutral infrastructure provider" does not describe A/I so your scenario is hypothetical.

i am replying specifically to your comments about neutral providers (that's why i quoted the part of your comment that i did)

>No, because they actively respond to removal request.

there is still orders of magnitude more conversations going through the providers i mentioned, related to terrorism/csam/etc., which is simply not reported or not known. right now, meta is facilitating significantly more terrorism than a/i.

in any case, this isn't really about terrorism. they've just overused the child-safety angle lately, and needed to drum up some anti-privacy/anti-encryption using the terrorism card.

Isn't forcing a provider to do business with everyone who asks just as bad? You're saying noblogs should be compelled to host nazi blogs. (Actual Nazis, not a euphemism. People who want Jews to be gassed.) You're also saying wedding cake bakers should be compelled to bake cakes for gay weddings.

did you read the part where nonethewiser said "And even if they were [neutral] that doesn't mean the US shouldn't sanction them for supporting terrorism."?

the double-negative might be confusing, so we can reword it to: "And even if they were neutral, the US should sanction them for supporting terrorism"

that's the part i quoted and my comment is about.

Amazon also only supports groups it aligns with.

Yeah you're not, what you've done is basing your arguments on a false premise.

Yes, we are talking about a communications service, one specifically focusing on political speech.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Email, chat, websites, blogs - these are all speech! A/I's overt political statement (that you are indicting them for) points to their primary interest being to facilitate political speech - a type of speech with some of the strongest protections (that whole "assemble ... and petition the Government" thing)

Beyond that, they're presumably a neutral conduit like every other service provider. If some users of their services are communicating to coordinate crimes, then unless A/I is getting directly involved in those conversations (with the government producing hard evidence of this), it's the exact same dynamic as every other email/hosting provider.